Does the JetClean need a specific type of water source?

Bucket works fine. I use a 5 gallon one for mine and it pulls water no problem. I prefer that over dragging a hose around anyway. Just keep the filter end from sitting in the muck at the bottom.

The bigger issue with a bucket is how much water you actually end up going through, not whether the thing will run. I tried the bucket route when I first got mine and it worked, but I burned through way more than I expected just doing half a car. If your patio is big you’ll be refilling constantly, which gets old fast. The suction itself isn’t the problem, it’s the capacity. So it’ll run off a bucket, but don’t expect to do a whole driveway on one fill. That’s the part people leave out when they say it works fine.

I mostly use mine off a rain barrel, which is kind of the same idea as a bucket since it’s just sitting water with no tap pressure behind it. It pulls from that without any fuss, so I doubt the source itself matters much as long as the intake end stays under the surface. The one thing I ran into was the filter clogging up after a while because my barrel collects a bit of grit and leaf bits, and once that happened the spray got weak and sputtery. Cleaned it off and it was back to normal. So the water can come from wherever, but keeping the intake reasonably clean makes a bigger difference than whether it’s a hose or not. Mine’s been running off the barrel for a couple months now with no real complaints.

Bucket works. That’s how I run mine most of the time since my spigot is on the wrong side of the house. You just drop the intake in and go.

I’d just use the bucket and skip the hose hassle.

A bucket is fine, that’s not the concern. I’ve watched people run these off all sorts of still water and the pump doesn’t care where the water comes from.

What matters more is how long you plan to run it. Bucket feeding works great for a quick rinse or one car, but when the water level drops the intake starts sucking air and you’re standing there babysitting it. I’ve had to top off mid-wash more than once. A hose just keeps feeding without you thinking about it.

So for the patio or a single car, bucket is totally workable. For anything longer you’ll get annoyed refilling. That’s the real tradeoff, not whether it can pull from a bucket. It can. Whether you want to keep filling one is another question.

I don’t think a bucket is the best long term option. I ran mine off a bucket for a couple of weekends and the pump started sounding rough, switched back to a hose and it went away. Could have been my setup but I’d keep it in mind.

I kind of went the opposite direction with mine. Everyone keeps saying bucket is fine but I actually found the bucket annoying enough that I stopped using it after like two washes. The suction thing works, sure, but the intake kept floating up and gulping air whenever I tilted the bucket, and then the spray would stutter. Switched to a cheap collapsible rain barrel thing I already had in the yard and it’s been way smoother since. So it’s less about whether it *can* pull from a bucket and more about how much babysitting you’re willing to do while you’re spraying. For a quick rinse of the car it’s whatever, but if you’re doing the patio for an hour you’ll feel it. Anyway that was my experience, yours might be totally fine if your bucket is deeper.